


SHIELD is not a daycare for young superheroes (except when it is)

by withasideofangst



Series: wishlist_fic 2015 challenge [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassin Parenting, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Community: wishlist_fic, Gen, No Dialogue, POV Outsider, Unconventional Families, kid Matt, shifted timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:55:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5499587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withasideofangst/pseuds/withasideofangst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Instead of Stick being the one to teach Matt about his powers, it's one of the Avengers/member of SHIELD. Who treat him well and love him and I'm fine with it if they adopt him. I just want to see how being trained by someone who cares about him would change Matt.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>SHIELD was not a daycare, as Fury kept repeating.</p>
<p>No one seems to have told Hawkeye this.  (Or they did.  Repeatedly.  He just didn't listen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	SHIELD is not a daycare for young superheroes (except when it is)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SongBirdie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongBirdie/gifts).



> I’m honestly stumped on a couple of the wishlist_fic 2015 prompts now, and with that plus my fractured elbow, I may need to bench a couple. I am long overdue on updating Substantial Code, so that’s next.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this! I find this POV without dialog a little odd, but for some reason that's how I kept envisioning this fic in my head. No idea why. I just kept seeing Barton and Matt's relationship from the outside.

Things began to change at SHIELD the day Agent Barton came back from a mission in Hell’s Kitchen with a young boy in tow.

He’d been sent after a local gang who had been about to branch into terrorism.  When he returned, however, he had a quiet boy with him, who he introduced as Matt Murdock.  The kid wore thick red sunglasses and walked in clinging to Barton’s hand, and didn’t say a word to anyone.

Over the next few days, he tailed Barton everywhere, and while no one knew who he was or why he was there, all the other agents came to expect the two to be together everywhere.  (Agent Romanov was off on a mission, and without her, no one wanted to be the one to ask Barton why he suddenly had a kid.  He wasn’t as scary as Romanov, but as her best friend, all the agents were rightly terrified of him too.  A little.)

The kid even followed Barton to the shooting range, where he sat off to the side while Barton shot arrow after arrow into the center of every target.

They made an odd pair, the deaf agent and the blind kid.

A few weeks later, Barton left the kid at SHIELD to go on a mission, and came back with an alien-mutated version of the flu.  While he was gone, the kid didn’t leave Barton’s rooms, but after he was back, the agents were surprised to see the kid wander into the cafeteria on his own.

He walked a little unsteadily to the counter, and left with a meal for himself and a bowl of soup for Barton, carrying it slowly and with intense care back to Barton’s rooms.

He couldn’t possibly have heard the whispers of some of the agents, calling him rather adorable, as he passed.  Oddly though, he turned pink anyway as he walked by.

A week later, after Barton was better, both Barton and the kid were back, walking around the halls with whispers drifting in their wake.  Both sported a number of bruises, long and skinny, like they’d been smacking each other with sticks.

Agents were starting to get worried, until they witnessed the pair dueling in a hallway.  The kid was holding a cane - and that was the first time anyone actually realized the kid was blind - and Barton with a similar-sized stick of his own.

Both were landing a decent number of hits, causing welts to show up on their arms and legs.  Barton was clearly holding back, but the kid was doing well, particularly considering how young he was.

A few days later, Natasha returned, and the three of them became a common sight again.  It seemed Natasha had given Barton a good talking-to when she first returned, as he looked rather abashed the next time anyone saw him.  The kid didn’t seem scared of her (unlike most of the agents), however, and she treated him like an extension of Barton after that.

Over the next few months, both of the assassin duo could be seen training the kid, and the way he fought, no one at SHIELD could believe he was blind.

Then, when Natasha was out on a mission overseas, Barton was captured on a separate mission when he had to cover for a rookie agent’s mistake.  A team of agents was sent after him, but no one noticed the small figure sneaking onto the quinjet with them.

Then mid-mission, all anyone spotted of the kid was the briefest flash of his red-tinted glasses as he snuck in ahead of the rest of the team.  By the time the SHIELD agents reached the elevator of the base Barton was being held in, the elevator was just reaching their floor.

The doors pinged open with every agent’s gun trained on them, but only Barton and the kid were inside, Barton smirking at the quiet kid, an arm around his shoulders, and only slightly using him for support to walk.

They strode past the team, who just stared in shock, before jogging to catch up.  The ride home was nearly silent, with Barton avoiding the medic on board while he taught the kid a few Carney card tricks.  No one noticed the small amount of blood on the end of the kid’s cane.

When they emerged from the jet, Natasha was waiting for them with her arms crossed, and Barton cringed slightly when she walked towards them.  She only gave Barton a hard look, however, and then squatted down to look the kid over.  Her eyes took in the trace of blood and then unharmed look of the kid, and she gave him a small nod in approval and whispered something no agent heard.

The kid gave a small smile in return, and the three walked off together, leaving the agents behind to wonder just how the kid could see without his vision.

They never found out, despite Maria Hill and Director Fury both asking Barton about it repeatedly.  By the end of the kid’s first year, however, Barton had officially adopted him, and he’d made unauthorized appearances on several more missions.

Natasha trained with him more after that, and then all the agents saw was the aftermath of his presence on missions, but never the kid himself.  All of SHIELD knew the kid had Agent Romanov’s stamp of approval all over him.

Within a couple years, Fury was ready to make the kid an agent, but the kid refused.  

Then the Battle of New York happened.

After the Avengers were formed, and Barton and Natasha were no longer fixtures at SHIELD (plus the little mishap with the nuclear missile), Matt Murdock vanished.

When Fury went to Barton, he didn’t seem concerned.  A few weeks later, thugs and mobsters started getting beaten up in Hell’s Kitchen, and rumors spread of a tiny demon, all red, making appearances at night.

Occasionally, arrow holes could be found at sites where the demon was spotted, and a kid with red glasses could be seen visiting Avengers Tower every few days.

Later, two kids could be seen entering the Tower, and only the one with glasses exited, leaving a young girl with dark hair, a gloomy demeanor, and several cuts and scrapes behind.

SHIELD was not a daycare, as Fury kept repeating.

But Hawkeye seemed to be a rather unconventional babysitter for young superheroes.

(No one else in the Tower seemed to mind.)


End file.
